Frozen yogurt has been the next big thing at least three times over the last 30 years.  When it first came out I’m pretty sure they just threw some yogurt (“yoghurt”?) in the freezer at a time when it only appealed to a cult of health nuts. (Full disclosure: including me.) Not surprisingly, the market remained cult-sized. Then there was Penguin’s in the ‘80s. They hit the right balance between healthful and sinful.  Where else could you order non-fat yogurt covered in hot fudge and Reese’s Pieces? Less guilt but all the sugar. Penguins exploded and franchised until Big Ice Cream joined the froyo fray. Baskin-Robbins added frozen yogurt to the menu and it wasn’t long before Penguin’s slid into Chapter 11. Sadly, their assets were frozen. After that, frozen yogurt seemed to fade into the woodwork until a year or so ago when an innovative new trend emerged: SELF SERVICE!

Non-fat Software! 

Now it seems self-serve yogurt shops are popping up everywhere. The idea is simple. You grab a cup and decide how much you want; which flavors and toppings. Get your personalized concoction weighed at the counter and you pay by the ounce/pound.   It’s faster, more hands-on and more fun. It occurred to me that self-serve frozen yogurt aligns perfectly with the popularity of SaaS. Software as a Service is the culmination of 30 years of software evolution. It represents a fundamental change in the way software is purchased, used and delivered. Pay as you go and just pay for what you need. SaaS is non fat software whose time has come thanks to low cost bandwidth, anywhere access plus a growing confidence in “the cloud”. Like self-serve frozen yogurt, SaaS has combined the right ingredients into a winning business model.

Fundability's Frozen Yogurt

We embrace the SaaS model and just launched our second Fundability SaaS product. It’s called CoFund – Company Fundability  – and is designed for private company CEOs and CFOs who need a secure way to communicate with prospective investors and current shareholders. CoFund is personalized and highly configurable (self-service!). It provides tools for raising a round of capital plus a secure platform for ongoing investor reporting. CoFund is the complement to our InFund SaaS product which helps VCs and other private equity investment firms manage their deals. Both products are sold on a monthly fee model. What’s also great about SaaS is that you can try before you buy. We don’t have sample spoons like a yogurt shop but we do offer a 14-day free trial on CoFund and InFund.  It’s all-you-can-eat (the full product) and guaranteed to make your business a little healthier.

On the big screen, Marlon Brando “could’ve been a contender”. In real life he could’ve been a VC when he said, “Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to - it's an absolute prerequisite!”  The word “private” is a big part of the professional investor’s vocabulary. Private equity starts with companies whose stock is not publically traded.  “Private” also means “proprietary” – as in the exclusive right to invest in a company. And we can’t ignore the confidentiality meaning of the word.  With this past week’s announcement of our Investor Fundability we created a private-branded SaaS  solution as new way for private equity firms to manage their proprietary deal flow and maintain confidentiality about their deals.

When we talked to VCs and investment bankers they told us:

“We have brand equity. We don’t want to be listed in a clearing house with every other firm.”

“We’re bombarded with deal submissions and need a better way to manage the deal process."

“We already see more deals than we can invest in, but we can always use more quality deal flow and we want to have the first look.”

“Our proprietary deal sources create a competitive advantage."

We built Investor Fundability as an extension of a firm’s web site including branding, logo and colors. The idea is to makes it easy to capture and filter potential investments based on the firm’s criteria matched against pre-defined meta data. When a deal makes the cut Investor Fundability can be used by the fund team to work the deal through the process of research, due diligence, syndication and deal closing.  Once a deal is closed, there are secure digital reporting tools for ongoing investor relations as well as for Board-level communications.

Investor Fundability product works closely with our open Fundability Marketplace where early stage companies and accredited investors can connect on seed stage rounds. Firms using Investor Fundability can refer deals that are too small or too early over to the Fundability Marketplace which might be perfect for individual investors.  They can also go to the Fundability Marketplace when searching for fresh deals. 

Investor Fundability is the first of two new SaaS products. We will announce our second SaaS product in a few days to address the needs of later stage companies – private companies, of course.